Main Participants: ZHAO Yiping, LIU Wei, YU Xiangqian, WANG Mingxin, XU Bing, ZHANG Zhifu, DENG Tenglin, LIU Di, WANG Wenting, WANG Xinzhu, WANG Zihe, DU Xiaofeng

Water resources scarcity in water-deficient areas has long been a restraint to local social and economic development. Due to complex geological and hydrogeological conditions, traditional detection technologies can only provide rough inversion of geological structures, resulting in considerable uncertainty about whether there is groundwater and a drilling success ratio of of around 40%. As poverty alleviation and the rural vitalization features high on China’s development strategy, it has become an urgent need to develop accurate groundwater detection technologies and address the chronic water resources scarcity in water-deficient areas. Based on a number of projects, we developed a technology for rapidly and accurately detecting groundwater to address the problems with sources of drinking water and process water in these areas.

·   Adopting advanced groundwater detection equipment to study the groundwater distribution patterns and electromagnetic signal characteristics of different geological origins; and the relevant laws were drawn to localize accurate groundwater detection technologies;

·   Studying the applicability of different detection technologies to groundwater detection in different media in water-deficient areas by integrating the advantages of various detection methods, innovating application practices and developing a technology for rapidly and accurately detecting groundwater in water-deficient areas;

·   Innovating applications based on the technology for rapidly and accurately detecting groundwater in water-deficient areas.

·   Having established a thin aquifer exploration technology model suitable for accurate groundwater detection in water-deficient areas, raising the accuracy of aquifer thickness detection to less than 3m and making up for the deficiency of traditional detection technologies in thin aquifer exploration;

·   Having put forward a more accurate technology for dividing aquifers and aquicludes based on audio magnetotelluric sounding (AMT) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) by introducing the NMR-based groundwater detection technology;

·   Having proposed for the first time in the world a NMR-based non-invasive aquifer parameter estimation model, which can help improve the applicability of the surface nuclear magnetic resonance sounding (MRS) to the estimation of aquifer permeability coefficients and water yield property degrees in field conditions;

·   Having developed for the first time a NMR-based technology for determining the saltwater-freshwater interface of groundwater, filling a technology gap on regional scale.

First applied in Inner Mongolia of China, the technologies have been adopted in about 100 counties/banners in Chinese provinces like Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, and Guizhou as well as Mongolia, helping with the local drinking water supply for both household and livestock and industrial water supplies. It have raised the drilling success ratio in water-deficient areas from 40% to 90%, which can save the cost of groundwater detection in these areas by 40%, and solved the drinking water difficulties for 200,000 residents and more than 20 million livestock, saving more than 200 million yuan various sources, with significant social, economic and people's livelihood benefits.

Fig.1 The research team conducting borehole pumping test

Fig.2 Interpretation results of hydrogeological profiles

Fig.3 Determination of the saltwater-freshwater interface

Fig.4 Methodology integration of water spotting in sandy areas

Fig.5 Successful well drilling in a red-bed water deficient area of Erenhot, Inner Mongolia, China